About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

Bowalley Road Rules

The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

Followers

Friday, 31 August 2018

What Were They Thinking? It’s probably fair to say that “Queen Jacinda’s” response to the "Crisis of Business Confidence" would be somewhat more robust than inviting Air New Zealand CEO, Chris Luxon, to chair a Business Advisory Council!

IN ENGLISH LAW “compassing the king’s death” was treason.
“Compassing”, in this context, meant ‘imagining’, ‘contriving’ or ‘plotting’.
Medieval jurists held fast to the notion that the thought is father to the
deed. Which made even thinking about the king’s death a capital crime. After
all, if the Gospel of Matthew (5:27-28) could hold that “whosoever looketh on a
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart”,
then any subject looking darkly upon the monarch was, at the very least, guilty
of entertaining treasonous thoughts about his future. Thought Crime existed
long before George Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty-Four.

It would be interesting to live in a world where simply
thinking negative thoughts about important people and institutions could get
you arrested. What would become of business leaders, for example, if they were
shown to have consistently experienced (let alone given voice to) a woeful lack
of confidence in the personnel and policies of the Government? Such negativity
would, almost certainly, be drawn to the “monarch’s” attention. How would she
respond?

It’s probably fair to say that “Queen Jacinda’s” response
would be somewhat more robust than inviting Air New Zealand CEO, Chris Luxon,
to chair a Business Advisory Council!

One can easily imagine her humbler subjects demanding that
she take a very hard line with such rebellious noblemen. After all, compassing
the demise of the kingdom’s economy strikes directly at the livelihoods of
tens-of-thousands of hard-working men and women. Excessive business negativity
costs jobs. It stymies much needed investment. Taken to extremes, it can
seriously jeopardise the economic well-being of the entire country. It’s hard
to see “Queen Jacinda” regarding this as anything other than economic treason.

In the Middle Ages, rebellious nobles faced not only
execution, but also the complete forfeiture of their estates to the Crown. Were
such draconian powers still available to the leaders of today, then it is easy
to predict the outcome of what most of the country’s leading economists have characterised
as a completely unwarranted “Crisis of Business Confidence”.

Queen Jacinda’s Attorney-General, David Parker, would be
asked to draft her a sheaf of all-purpose Bills of Attainder which she would
then pass over to her Justice Minister, Andrew Little, for presentation to the
House.

Bill of Attainder? Oh, these were extraordinary documents! A
“Bill” or, once passed, an “Act of Attainder” was a piece of legislation
declaring a person or persons guilty of a crime, or crimes, without the irksome
necessity of first securing their conviction in an ordinary court of law.
Essentially, Bills of Attainder forced their victims to undergo “Trial by
Parliament” (in the United States they call this “Impeachment”) in which the
role of the jury was played by the assembled parliamentarians. A simple
majority was enough to strip “over-mighty” subjects of their titles, offices, properties
– even their lives.

With Lord Shane Jones playing the role of the Queen’s
Special Prosecutor, it isn’t difficult to predict how these Trials by
Parliament would go. The rebellious business barons would be found guilty of “Compassing
the Death of the Economy” and their companies and corporations would be
declared forfeit to the Crown. “Nationalisation”, you see, goes back a lot
further than the Twentieth Century!

And what about Master Simon Bridges? Surely, Queen Jacinda
and her counsellors have a strong prima
facie case that he is not only the prime mover in this plot to kill the
economy, but that he also intended the misfortunes flowing from its demise to
effect the political death of the Queen?

Did he not declare on Thursday, 30th August that: “Business
confidence has slumped further to levels not seen since the global financial
crisis 10 years ago. This time the crisis is of the Government’s own making and
the return to duty of the Prime Minister a month ago has only made it worse.”

No loyal subject of Queen Jacinda could read those words
without forming the strong conviction that Master Bridges means his monarch
harm. That he has already committed treason against her in his heart.

“Convey him to the Tower! Prepare the Bill of Attainder!
Fetch timber for the scaffold! Sharpen the axe!”

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 31 August 2018.

"Don't think of it as a hand on your shoulder, Malcolm. Think of it as a knife in your back." The ultimate beneficiary of the Liberal Party meltdown, Scott Morrison, is a deeply conservative evangelical Christian from one of Sydney’s leafiest suburbs. He replaces Turnbull largely because his name isn’t Peter Dutton – and because his face doesn’t remind the voting public quite so much of Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort! In policy terms, however, there is very little that distinguishes Morrison from his ultra-conservative colleagues.

NEW ZEALANDERS WATCHED, with mounting incredulity, the
meltdown of Australia’s Liberal-National coalition government. What unfolded
appeared to be driven almost entirely by a toxic mixture of personal
antipathies and oversized egos. Nowhere in the whole unedifying political saga
did the interests of the Australian people appear to get a look in.

Mind you, the Australian people had made it easy for Malcolm
Turnbull’s enemies. When questioned by the pollsters they had failed to draw a
sufficiently clear distinction between the Prime Minister and his increasingly
dysfunctional Party Room. Had they praised Malcolm Turnbull, and damned the
Liberal Party, then the cause of governmental integrity and stability might
have been strong enough to repel Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton and their reckless
co-conspirators.

As it was, the polls and a swag of dispiriting by-election
results in Queensland and elsewhere across Australia provided Abbott and Dutton
with the pretext they needed for a leadership spill. Never mind that the
declining popularity of the Liberals was almost entirely attributable to the
party’s conservative faction’s blank refusal to accept that most Australians
wanted nothing to do with their reactionary ideas.

Not even the decisive result of the informal plebiscite on
Gay Marriage was enough to convince them that they were out-of-touch with
mainstream Australia. They clung to the demonstrably false notion that “Real
Australians” were with them.

Though fantastical, this conservative conviction was
constantly reinforced by reactionaries in the news media. The views of a
decided minority of the Australian electorate were thus supplied with
amplification out of all proportion to their true demographic weight. As Dr
Goebbels discovered more than eighty years ago: a fantasy repeated often enough
will, eventually, take on the colour of reality.

Poor Malcolm Turnbull was, therefore, dammed if he did
attempt to reassert the liberalism implicit in his party’s name; and damned if
he didn’t. The deeply conservative ideology of the Liberal PM, John Howard, has
become practically ineradicable from Liberal Party ranks. Turnbull may have
been able to oust Abbot from The Lodge, but he could never muster the numbers
to oust the conservative faction’s racism, misogyny, homophobia and purblind climate
change denialism.

The ultimate winner of the Liberal Party leadership, Scott
Morrison, is a deeply conservative evangelical Christian from one of Sydney’s
leafiest suburbs. He replaces Turnbull largely because his name isn’t Peter
Dutton – and because his face doesn’t remind the voting public quite so much of
Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort! In policy terms, however, there is very little
that distinguishes Morrison from his ultra-conservative colleagues.

But, it is with these largely cosmetic considerations that
the Australian political system’s willingness to be guided by the wishes of the
electorate ends. The notion that the major political parties might still aggregate
and organise the interests of clear and readily comprehensible chunks of the
population: businessmen and professionals; shopkeepers and farmers; workers and
intellectuals; has long since ceased to correspond to any recognisable description
of political reality on either side of the Tasman.

To be fair, most of the voting public has enthusiastically
reciprocated the politicians’ lack of interest. Over the course of the past
30-40 years membership of political parties in both New Zealand and Australia
has plummeted. Most voters now draw little distinction between a Member of
Parliament and any other variety of highly-paid public servant. The crucial
democratic role which the people’s representatives are supposed to play is no
longer generally appreciated. As the unedifying spectacle of Malcolm Turnbull’s
deposition unfolded before their eyes over the third week in August, the
response of most Aussies was to angrily instruct MPs to: “Do your f***ing job!”

But, if the people are no longer sovereign – then who is?
It’s a tricky question. In the days of Robert Menzies or Rob Muldoon it was
pretty clear to everyone who ran the show. Nowadays, however, respect for the
party leader tends to last only as long as the polls remain favourable. But, when
public support falters, the most treacherous and ambitious politicians look in
the mirror and ask the oldest question is politics: “Why not me?”

The historical precedent, therefore, is not that of a
powerful monarchy like England or France, but of Poland or Scotland. Weak
kingdoms brought down by the unceasing intrigues and inveterate treachery of aristocrats
who cared more for themselves than they did for their country.

This essay was
originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday,
31 August 2018.

Thursday, 30 August 2018

Noises Off: This is the nightmare quality of current events. That, beyond the wafer-thin screens of normality, vast beasts go prowling in the dark. We can hear them barking and roaring: sometimes far away; sometimes frighteningly close. There’s a skittering of claws on marble floors. Eyes glowing green in the shadows. And, try as we may, we cannot wake up. Painting by Otto Dix.

HOW CAN YOU TELL when a system is falling apart? That the
load-bearing walls of everyday reality are beginning to weaken? The simple
answer is absurdity. Words spoken and positions taken that simply make no
sense. Behaviour that raises suspicion of complete madness. Sums that stubbornly
refuse to add up.

Think about the extraordinary display put on by Australia’s
governing party, the Liberal Party. What was that all about? For some time the
party has been declining in the polls. So, what does it do? It convulses itself
in a bloody and ultimately pointless bout of political fratricide. Hurling
aside an urbane, accomplished and highly intelligent politician, Malcolm
Turnbull, and replacing him with an intellectually stunted and morally vacuous religious
zealot whose primary political accomplishments have been the persecution of
refugees and the punishment of the poor. Entirely unsurprisingly, the Liberal’s
primary vote has sunk to record lows.

Then there is the ongoing campaign by the United Kingdom’s
liberal establishment to destroy Jeremy Corbyn. Unable to counter the Labour
leader’s policies: for fear of exposing their unshakeable allegiance to the
“loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires” (thank you Paul Simon)
that constitutes the actual government of the world; these ostensibly
“progressive” politicians and journalists have embarked upon a barking-mad
effort to paint Corbyn and his allies in the Labour Party as “antisemites”. By
which they mean opponents of the State of Israel.

Now anyone who knows anything about Jeremy Corbyn (which
includes the people who are levelling the charge of antisemitism against him) cannot
possibly believe that he is prejudiced against Jews simply because they are
Jews. Corbyn’s quarrel is with the ideology of Zionism, and with the unjust and
often downright murderous actions of the Israeli state: a stance he has
maintained with admirable consistency for more than thirty years.

Clearly, the prospect of such a man being just one general
election away from No. 10 Downing Street is of profound concern to right-wing
Israeli politicians and supporters of Zionism all around the world. That such
people are attempting to undermine Corbyn is perfectly understandable. But, the
campaign being waged against him on the pages of The Guardian isn’t about Israel – or Jewish people. It’s about something
else; something all the more unnerving for being unspoken. It’s about who is
entitled to govern the UK and who is not.

Corbyn constitutes an existential threat to the UK’s governing
elites, whose formerly vice-like grip on the nation’s political and cultural
institutions has been seriously weakened by a bottom-up political insurgency
from the left of UK politics for which the veteran left-wing MP has acted as a
lightning-rod. They are calling Corbyn an antisemite because they can’t
plausibly call him a paedophile and because they are not yet desperate enough
to call for his assassination.

That’s why it all sounds so mad. Like the accusations which
Stalin levelled against the old Bolsheviks in the Moscow show-trials of the
1930s. They are lies – obvious and terrible lies – but with the power of the
apparatus behind them they risk acquiring the character of Truth. So we go on
reading the articles in The Guardian:
noting the rising pitch of hysteria between every line; and the world lurches
sideways under our feet.

And then we look at Donald Trump’s America, and Corbyn’s
woes fade – overwhelmed by the dazzling image of the planet’s most powerful
nation spontaneously combusting.

It’s all about race, of course. The whole history of the
United States has been about race. About being white, or, more accurately about
not being red, black, yellow or brown. The history of the United States of
America is a series of evermore urgent reiterations of a consistent ruling-class
strategy of making sure that the consciousness of class oppression is forever being
displaced by the awareness of racial privilege.

The election of Barack Obama was the trigger. A black man in
the White House was the ultimate symbol of white decline. From that moment on,
a majority of white Americans were seized by a racial distemper that rotted
their brains and inflamed their spleens. Though Trump has yet to speak or tweet
the words explicitly, “Making America Great Again” has the ring of a genocidal
call-to-arms. What else could it be? When demographic trends threaten to
submerge white Americans in a diverse, multicultural morass?

When Trump talks about “draining the swamp” the assumption
has always been that he is talking about cleaning up Washington DC. But what if
he means draining away or diverting the waters that are lapping at the feet of
white Americans? What if he intends to leave white America high and dry by
simply getting rid of all those forces that are threatening to swamp it?

This is the nightmare quality of current events. That, beyond
the wafer-thin screens of normality, vast beasts go prowling in the dark. We
can hear them barking and roaring: sometimes far away; sometimes frighteningly
close. There’s a skittering of claws on marble floors. Eyes glowing green in
the shadows. And, try as we may, we cannot wake up.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Thursday, 30 August 2018.

Tuesday, 28 August 2018

The Way We Were: If what used to be called the social wage (education, health, welfare payments such as Working For Families) had to be picked up by the bosses, then our society would very rapidly degenerate into something resembling early industrial Britain. The capitalists couldn’t pay their workers enough to cover the now non-existent social wage, so they wouldn’t. Human-beings would, wherever possible, be replaced by machines, and those without a stake in the new order of things would be left to starve in squalor.

SUSAN ST JOHN’S INDIGNATION at the way the Working For
Families (WFF) payment has been cast as an employer subsidy is palpable. “Blaming WFF for low wages”, exclaims Susan “is a bit like pointing to our high rate of suicide and blaming it on the existence of the mental health services.” Neither is she slow to sheet home the “true cause of low wages”. This, she says, is to be found in “casualised hours, precarious employment, automation, globalised labour markets and falling wage share of output due to loss of union power.”

St John is scathing in her condemnation of the purveyors of
what she regards as the “subsidy myth”. Matthew Hooton, Eric Crampton on the
Right; Bryce Edwards on the Left; and “others”.

Well, among those “others” I must acknowledge myself. Until
relatively recently, I, too, was convinced that WFF, by topping-up the
manifestly inadequate wages paid to workers, acted as a multi-billion-dollar
subsidy to the employing class. Instead of the bosses paying their workers a
living wage, those workers were being kept afloat by the taxes paid by other
workers. How could that be fair?

But then I found myself seated next to Susan at one of Laila
Harré’s “salons” and was set straight on WFF in the most forthright fashion.

Where were the critics of WFF prepared to call a halt? Susan
demanded. If this particular “subsidy” was torn away, why not the taxpayer-funded
public education system? Or public health? Just imagine how much more the
bosses would be required to pay their workers if their wages were to cover not
only the additional costs associated with raising children, but also the cost
of private education and private health insurance? And what about the roads and
the electricity grid? What about the water supply? Or sewerage disposal? How
high would wages have to be lifted if every man and woman in the country was required
to pay for all this crucial infrastructure directly – rather than by means of
taxation?

The fact of the matter, Susan informed me, is that the
entire capitalist system is subsidised. The viability of the present economic
system; the ability of every company – private or public – to return a profit
to its shareholders; rests upon the willingness of the state to pick up the
lion’s share of the costs of raising, educating and keeping healthy all those workers
whose daily labours keep their employers in business.

It was not always so. In the very early years of capitalism
workers were paid just enough to cover the cost of keeping a roof over their
heads and food in their bellies – less if demand faltered or prices increased
sharply. The contribution of the state was limited to providing the soldiers
necessary to restore order if the capitalists’ workers, driven to utter
desperation, rebelled; the courts in which the ringleaders could be convicted;
and the prisons (or penal colonies) in which such miscreants could be safely
immured.

It didn’t work. As industrial technology grew ever more
sophisticated, the need for a well-educated workforce grew ever more urgent.
Likewise, with workers’ health. Deadly diseases left gaping holes in the
working population. Clean water, hygienic waste disposal, unadulterated food, safe
housing: all of these improvements, supplied collectively via rates and taxes,
were crucial to improving the quality of life of the working-class. They were
no less important, however, in keeping the capitalists profitable. Assessed
from the perspective of the long-suffering wage and salary earner, the whole
edifice of industrial civilisation looks suspiciously like an employer subsidy!

Which is precisely Susan St John’s point. If what used to be
called the social wage (education, health, basic infrastructure) had to be
picked up by the bosses, then our society would very rapidly degenerate into
something resembling early industrial Britain. The capitalists couldn’t pay
their workers enough to cover the now non-existent social wage, so they
wouldn’t. Human-beings would, wherever possible, be replaced by machines, and
those without a stake in the new order of things would be left to starve in
squalor.

And, yes, you’re right, what this all adds up to is the
far-from-novel conclusion that capitalism is an economic system subsidised by
the many to the inordinate advantage of the few. Working For Families is,
therefore, a very long way from being the most egregious example of society
picking up the tab for meeting at least some of the needs of its most
vulnerable members. Suggesting that the bosses take over this responsibility is
pointless: they have neither the means, nor the inclination, to do so.

And, no, you’re not wrong, capitalism is, indeed, a grossly
exploitative and unjust system which only goes on working because the people
who keep the wheels turning get up every morning and, well ….. keep the wheels
turning.

One hundred years ago, working people understood this. Hell,
they even sang about it:

They have taken untold
millions that they never toiled to earn,

But without our brain
and muscle not a single wheel could turn.

We can break their
haughty power, gain our freedom, when we learn

That the union makes
us strong.

Solidarity forever!

Solidarity forever!

Solidarity forever!

For the union makes us
strong.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 28 August 2018.

Saturday, 25 August 2018

Little Proposes, Middle New Zealand Disposes: If nothing else, the Justice Summit has shown Andrew Little what he is up against. The anger and hurt of Maori. The anxious attempts of various state institutions to meet the often contradictory expectations of their political masters. And last – but by no means least – the inescapable reality of “Middle New Zealand’s” veto: it’s indisputable power and its implacable determination to have the final say.

ANDREW LITTLE must be wondering whether his Justice Summit
was worth it. Encounters between practitioners of deliberative democracy and
participants in direct democracy are seldom trouble free. How could they be?
Deliberators are elected, while participants in direct democratic forums are
often self-selected, or, even worse, the delegates of special interest groups. By
the time the Justice Summit drew to a close it was very clear that the formal
practices of deliberative democracy and direct democracy’s roiling currents of
passion and conviction had only Little in common.

If nothing else, the experience will have shown Little what
he is up against. The anger and hurt of Maori. The radical programmes with
which the latter propose to empty the prisons of their disproportionate ethnic muster.
The anxious attempts of the various state institutions tasked with managing
crime and punishment to generate outcomes that meet the often contradictory
expectations of their political masters. And last – but by no means least – the
inescapable reality of “Middle New Zealand’s” veto: it’s indisputable power and
its implacable determination to have the final say.

That power was on full display in the opening hours of the
Summit when Jayne Crothall, whose three year old daughter, Brittany, was murdered
as she slept in 1997, was reported as breaking down in tears when a Maori woman
claimed Pakeha did not know what it was like to be victimised.

“This has been a horrendous summit for victims of crime”,
Crothall told the 700 Summit participants “People have been told they don’t
know what it is like to be a victim because they’re European. There have been a
lot of racist comments made. I have never heard so much racism.”

Sadly, it is Jayne Crothall’s words that Middle New Zealand
will take away from the Justice Summit. Her accusations of racism will be
amplified across the country by the Sensible Sentencing Trust who are also
likely to highlight the words of University of Canterbury criminologist, Greg
Newbold, who boycotted the whole event as a waste of time and told RNZ National
that if Little is serious about reducing the prison muster, then he should
“build more prisons and end double-bunking”.

Middle New Zealand: overwhelmingly Pakeha; gainfully
employed; living in their own homes; law-abiding and tax-paying; is temperamentally
impatient (if not contemptuous) of sociological and historical explanations for
Maori offending. To their ears, the arguments of academics and “experts” about
poverty and colonisation come across as sounding suspiciously like excuses.

Which is why nearly all of the evidence of Maori suffering
will have been, at best, half-heard by Middle New Zealand. At worst, it will be
taken as proof of the “Maarees’” manifest deficiencies as citizens. By
contrast, and simply because they chime so completely with their own
deep-seated prejudices, Jayne Crothall’s words will not only be heard, but they
will also be remembered and angrily repeated. Such is the power of Pakeha confirmation
bias.

The thing to remember about all of the colonial societies in
which the settlers have triumphed demographically, is that the
over-representation of the colonised in the criminal justice and prison systems
will be welcomed, consciously or unconsciously, by the settlers as proof that
their culture is still on top. Were only 15-16 percent of prison inmates Maori
(i.e. the muster matched the percentage of New Zealanders identifying as Maori)
a number (probably a distressingly large number) of Pakeha would interpret the
statistic as evidence that the Police and the Courts were not doing their jobs.

Of course, Andrew Little can’t say that: not if he wants his
party to win the next election. What’s more, the Labour-NZF-Green Government
cannot even be seen to be addressing the gross over-representation of Maori in
New Zealand’s prison system to aggressively. Middle New Zealand’s tolerance
threshold runs out at the notion of convicted criminals being rehabilitated
outside prison walls. They will accept intensifying rehabilitation efforts
behind bars, and many would accept the desirability of every prisoner having
their own cell. What they will not accept is criminals being “set loose in the
community” before they have demonstrated conclusively that it is safe to
release them.

That’s why Greg Newbold advised Andrew Little to “build more
prisons and end double-bunking”. Because he is shrewd enough (as both an ex-con
and an academic expert) to know that his is the only formula which Middle New
Zealand (the people who determine the outcome of general elections) is ready to
accept.

That Little gets this was illustrated by his last-minute
offer to hold a special summit for the victims of crime. It’s a terrible idea.
Such a gathering will, almost certainly, morph into a no-holds-barred display
of Middle New Zealand’s retributive instincts. Little will be ordered to keep
on doing everything that his just-concluded Justice Summit begged him to stop
doing. The racist arbiters of crime and punishment in New Zealand will
jubilantly exercise their political veto – and, God forgive them, Andrew Little
and Jacinda Ardern will comply.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 24 August 2018.

Friday, 24 August 2018

You Gotta Serve Somebody: Is it more accurate to describe MPs as employees of their party? Certainly, the master-servant characterisation works much better in this context than in any other. Without a party, becoming an MP is virtually impossible. Moreover, to become a parliamentary candidate, individuals are not only expected to sacrifice their judgement to the opinion of their party – they are required to.

JACINDA JUST FROZE her colleagues’ income for at least a
year. Politicians, she reckons, don’t need any more money. With the average
backbench MP’s salary topping $160,000 per annum, most of us would agree.
Vehemently.

I say salary, but that’s just for convenience. The truth is,
I don’t know what to call the income we taxpayers settle on our political
representatives. The word “salary” implies some sort of master-servant
relationship. That is certainly the talkback hosts’ assumption when they refer
to the members of the House of Representatives as: “our employees in
Wellington”.

Except they’re not our employees, they’re our
representatives – and being an elected representative of the people is very far
from being an employee of the people, let alone their servant!

The English philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke
(1729-1797) is often quoted on what the voters might reasonably expect from
their Member of Parliament. In his famous “Speech to the Electors of Bristol”
(1780) he wrote: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his
judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your
opinion.”

Less frequently quoted, but even more apposite, is Burkes’
contention that: “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different
and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and
advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative
assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local
purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting
from the general reason of the whole.”

If only! In the 238 years since Burke delivered his famous
speech, the British parliament (and our own) has ceased to be a collection of
individual representatives dedicated to the “general good” (if such a
disinterested body of politicians ever actually existed!) and has indeed become
a “congress”. Not of ambassadors, to be sure, but of political parties. These institutions are, indeed, representatives
of “different and hostile interests”; “agents and advocates” for every kind of
purpose and prejudice; and for all manner of causes.

Is it more accurate, then, to describe your MP as an
employee of his or her party?
Certainly, the master-servant characterisation works much better in this
context than in any other. Without a party, becoming an MP is virtually
impossible. Moreover, to become a parliamentary candidate, individuals are not
only expected to sacrifice their judgement to the opinion of their party – they
are required to.

This raises all manner of problems, however, because, as the
American novelist, Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) shrewdly observed: “It is
difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

If the only way to become – and remain – a parliamentarian
is by the grace and favour of one’s political party; and if the financial
reward for being an MP is in excess of $160,000; then our political parties are
particularly well set up to make “their” MPs understand only what the party
leaders want them to understand – on pain of becoming instantly, and in most
cases, considerably, poorer.

It is probably pertinent to observe at this point that an
income of $160,000 per annum places its recipient in the top 5 percent of New
Zealand’s income earners. At more than three times the medium income, it is
difficult to see how any person in receipt of such a handsome living could long
retain any sort of fellow-feeling with those required to live in more
straightened financial circumstances. When one is earning such a large sum of
money it is difficult to resist the whispered conclusion of one’s fattened ego
that it is entirely proper and well-deserved. It is then but a small step to
the conviction that the misery of others is similarly appropriate and
well-deserved.

The legends live on in the Labour Party of its founding
fathers living no better than their working-class supporters, and how prone they
were to share with the most destitute of their constituents what little remained
of their meagre parliamentary stipends. Such tales would certainly explain why
socialism remained for the First Labour Government something much more than a
mere rhetorical flourish; and why their ability to understand things was so
refreshingly unimpaired.

So, keep cutting Jacinda! The less our MPs take, then, assuredly,
the more likely they are to give.

This essay was
originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday,
24 August 2018.

Approaching The Edge: The huge problem facing the Greens is that no matter how loudly they trumpet their latest round of “concessions” from Labour and NZ First, in their heart-of-hearts they know they’re not making the slightest difference to the pace and extent of what is looking more-and-more like runaway climate change.

GREEN POLITICS has never been about business-as-usual. Green
politics has always been about the salvation of the planet and the reclamation
of the human soul from the talons of the Capitalist death-machine. To reduce
Green politics to mere environmentalism is to betray a complete misunderstanding
of its raison d’être.

Sadly and predictably, however, that is exactly what the
majority of New Zealand’s political commentators are doing. They are heaping
their praise upon the Green caucus for taking the party back-to-basics with
wonderful new policies about re-cycling car tyres and paying ten bucks to
whoever before dumping your rubbish.

As if New Zealanders (or, at least, those New Zealanders
with a still-functioning brain) aren’t aware that even if the entire nation
voluntarily reverted to a stone-age existence, then the rest of the planet
would struggle to measure the environmental impact of its sacrifice. New
Zealand’s contribution to Anthropogenic Global Warming, by way of CO2 and
Methane emissions, comes in at approximately 1 percent of the total. So the
best we could hope for, capitalist-death-machine-wise, is to maybe knock just a
tiny chip or two off its talons. Nothing more.

This is, of course, a huge problem for the Greens. No matter
how loudly they trumpet their latest round of “concessions” from Labour and NZ
First, in their heart-of-hearts they know they’re not making the slightest
difference to the pace and extent of what is looking more-and-more like runaway
climate change.

Alright! Alright! Calm down! I know it’s probably better to
do something than nothing. But, really, isn’t that all about polishing our
armour before riding out to certain death? We’re not going to win, but hey, at
least we’ll look suitably heroic as we lose!

Except, the self-inflicted psychic violence required for this
political strategy to work will very quickly destroy the Green Party. If “being
in government” means accepting that climate change will continue to run amok
before their helpless eyes, while in caucus-room and cabinet committee they
argue about whether or not to exclude methane from the greenhouse gasses the
agricultural sector should be expected to pay for, then, seriously, they’re
nuts. Pretending white is black and up is down is injurious to people’s
physical and emotional health. A political party which willingly engages in such
Orwellian “doublethink” is bound to become very sick, very fast.

Before you know it, they’ll be attempting to rehabilitate
the word “cunt”.

Or, failing to understand the need for legislation designed
to keep every member of the Green Party’s caucus focused on how best to address
the looming climatic apocalypse. Tender consciences should alight from the bus
immediately.

Far from striving to remain in government, the Greens should
be taking themselves out of it. By all means vote down every attempt by the
National Party and Act to unseat the Labour-NZ First coalition, but don’t
dissipate your energies in an unseemly scramble for a handful of sticky crumbs.
Those New Zealanders who understand how serious the threat of runaway climate
change has become want to know that the Greens get it too.

There’s a chilling track from Laurie Anderson’s Big Science album in which the lines
“This is your captain /We are going down” are repeated over and over. That’s
what it feels like now, whenever we read the latest grim findings from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We are going down.” When we study
photographs of vast holes in the Siberian tundra caused by the explosive
release of tons of methane gas: gas trapped for thousands of years beneath the
frozen soil; soil which is relentlessly thawing. “This is your captain /We are
going down.”

What the Greens need to be telling us, both here and all
over the planet, is how humanity can rush the cockpit, seize the plane’s
controls and pull it out of its current death-dive. Does that amount to a
revolution? Of course it does! How could it not? Is there any truly sentient individual
who doesn’t believe that only a global revolution in the way human-beings interact
with this planet’s biosphere can save them – along with the tens-of-thousands
of other species threatened by rapidly rising global temperatures?

A Green Party bent on saving the planet cannot be satisfied
with a mere 5 percent of the votes. It’s target must be 99 percent. No deals,
no coalitions, no memorandums of understanding: nothing less than complete
control of humanity’s stricken aircraft.

What does that mean for a tiny country at the bottom of the
world? It means remaining clear and consistent. It means waiting for people to
hear through all the static the Greens’ uncompromising message. It means
transforming this country into a megaphone of sufficient volume to reach the
ears of every human-being ready to listen. It means turning New Zealand into
the home of a Green “Comintern”. A place to which people come to receive the
message of planetary salvation and the soul’s reclamation, and then head back
out to spread it to everyone who is willing to listen.

With every passing year, the number of willing listeners
will grow. It’s a race now, between humanity in the cockpit fighting to prise capitalism’s
hands from the controls – and the ground.

This is your Green captain …..

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 21 August 2018.

Tuesday, 21 August 2018

On Message: Close study of American politics had convinced Richard Prebble (above) that if Act's classical liberal policies were to be given a third crack in the New Zealand legislature (after the successes of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson) then they would only get there on the coat-tails of right-wing populism.

DAVID SEYMOUR is attempting to replicate Act’s political
success under the leadership of Richard Prebble. Unfortunately for Act, David
ain’t no Richard. He lacks Prebble’s political instincts: those fearsome talents
honed to a savage cutting-edge by years of hand-to-hand conflict in the Labour
Party trenches. David is a theorist – not a pugilist – and, therefore, quite
unsuited to the raw exigencies of populist politics.

The confident statements of young political reporters
notwithstanding, however, it was not Richard Prebble who launched the
Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (Act) in 1994, but Roger Douglas and
Derek Quigley. What’s more, nothing could have been further from their minds, vis-a-vis
their new-born political infant’s political identity, than populism.

With massive financial backing from one of New Zealand’s
most enterprising business leaders, Craig Heatley, Act’s founders embarked on a
nationwide tour to sell the classical liberal ideology of their new party. The
man who gave New Zealand “Rogernomics” asked his many enthusiastic backers in
commerce and industry for access to their workforces. Douglas was firmly convinced
that once ordinary working-class voters “got” his message of freedom and
enterprise, Act could look forward to receiving mass popular support.

It didn’t work. The New Zealand working-class remained
stubbornly loyal to the Labour Party. A reputed $1.5 million and months of hard
yakka by Douglas and Quigley netted Act a return of just 1.5 percent in the
opinion polls. Pure and unadulterated classical liberalism did have an audience
in New Zealand. Unfortunately, that audience was vanishingly small.

Enter Richard Prebble.

Close study of American politics had convinced Prebble that
if classical liberal policies were to be given a third crack at the New Zealand
legislature (after the successes of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson) then they
would only get there on the coat-tails of right-wing populism.

Years in the Labour Party had taught Prebble that if you
want to bag political troglodytes, then the place to go hunting for them is in
the countryside. He also knew that although the working-class supported Labour
it did not do so unanimously. Working-class tories, “Waitakere Men” – call them
what you will – constituted a substantial and readily recruitable political
force. Of course, you had to be prepared to get your hands a little dirty –
quite a lot dirty, actually – but a little grime under his fingernails had
never bothered Prebble unduly. Not if it helped him to win.

Hard right-wingers from rural and provincial New Zealand;
social conservatives and ambitious battlers from the working-class suburbs of
the big cities; these thoroughly un-Act-like demographics were peremptorily bolted-on
to the refined upper-class ideologues from the leafy electorates and the eager
young libertarian idealists from the universities to power the party over the
all-important 5 percent MMP threshold.

It was a butt-ugly way to make it into Parliament, but it
worked. In the first MMP election, held in October 1996, Act secured 6.1
percent of the Party Vote and (with a nod and a wink from National’s Jim
Bolger) Richard Prebble won the seat of Wellington Central.

Over the next three years, Act’s manifesto took on a
decidedly Reaganesque flavour. Prebble’s dog-whistling over issues ranging from
the Treaty of Waitangi to welfare cheats and law and order consolidated his
grip on the unlikely coalition of conservatives and liberals with which he had
secured the party’s parliamentary beach-head. Act’s 1999 Party Vote was 7.04
percent rising to 7.14 percent in 2002. The former Labour Party political
brawler had proved it could be done.

Unfortunately for David Seymour, however, making Act
electable (without National Party assistance) requires the services of a Darth
Vader – not a C3PO. Prebble’s sudden departure from parliamentary politics in
2004 left Act floundering. It’s Party Vote in 2005 fell to 5.3 percent. Crucially,
Rodney Hide’s heroic campaigning in Epsom secured Act the electorate life-saver
it needed in the House of Representatives.

Seymour’s attempt to resurrect Act as a populist party is
almost certain to fail. That he is even trying strobes abject political
desperation. It also signals a curious insensitivity to the zeitgeist – the
“spirit of the times”. If ever there was a moment for someone to lift up the
banner of freedom – it is now. Combine the defence of free markets with the
defence of free speech and Act – proudly rebranded as “The Freedom League” – might
once again aspire to Prebble’s electoral success.

This essay was
originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of
Friday, 17 August 2018.

Tuesday, 14 August 2018

This ordinary-looking man, who lived in an ordinary-looking house, on an ordinary-looking street, who was tried in this ordinary-looking courtroom - for mass murder: Could this balding, middle-aged man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and an ill-fitting suit really be responsible for the deaths of six million innocent people? Far from resembling Lucifer, Adolf Eichmann looked like a worn-out bureaucrat – which is exactly what he was. The philosopher, Hannah Arendt, referred to this profoundly demoralising discrepancy as “the banality of evil”.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL has taxed the minds of men and women for
millennia. Is evil a force, like gravity, that drags human-beings down into the
depths of depravity? Does this force reside in a single conscious entity: immensely
powerful and seemingly immortal? If so, is this entity motivated to pour its
essence into individual human-beings: transforming them into monsters? Or is
it, rather, that certain individuals open themselves voluntarily to the malignant forces of the cosmos: deliberately absorbing them in order to unleash
evil upon others?

Many theologians (yes, theologians, because any discussion
of evil cannot help straying into the realms of religion and metaphysics)
reject the idea of evil as a universal force and dismiss entirely the idea that
evil can be personified. Their definition of evil employs the concepts of
absence and distance. Evil, they say, manifests itself in the behaviour of
people who have become separated from God. (Or, if you prefer, from what is
Good.) The more prolonged the absence; the greater the distance; the greater
their capacity to behave in “un-good” ways.

Since religion and metaphysics make a great many people
living in the twenty-first century uncomfortable, the Problem of Evil is often
transferred into the realm of science – most particularly, the disciplines of
psychiatry, psychology and neurology.

Of course, if the explanation for evil is neurological –
i.e. some form of brain malfunction – then the concept is immediately stripped of
its moral dimension. If someone behaves violently, inflicting pain and
suffering upon the innocent because of some physical defect they cannot
control, then they cannot be considered evil. Dangerous, certainly. But not
evil.

The psychiatrists, by contrast, search for the causes of
predatory and sadistic behaviour in the individual’s past. Traumatic events,
experienced in infancy, are believed to influence the individual’s adult
conduct. Violence and cruelty, especially, are thought to manifest themselves
intergenerationally. Or, as the English poet, W. H. Auden, expresses the idea
in his famous poem, “1 September 1939”:

I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.

But, even this approach to the Problem of Evil leaves many
people feeling troubled. Since we cannot control the things that are done to us
in our infancy then, surely, it is unfair to hold adult individuals responsible
for their aberrant behaviour. If the harm they inflict on others is generated
by harms inflicted on them, then how can we call them evil? Our unease becomes
even more pronounced when we discover that extreme trauma can leave not only
emotional, but also very real neurological scars on its victims’ minds and
brains. And, if that is true, then, once again, the concept of evil dissolves
before our eyes.

Psychology only compounds these concerns. If human behaviour
is the result of “drives” impelled by the mitochondria in our cells, our
instincts; and if religious, philosophical and ideological systems are overlaid
upon these drives in order to control and channel their social effects; then,
again, the scope for individual human agency is severely limited. As the
American socialist writer, Upton Sinclair, shrewdly observed: “It is very
difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends upon his
not understanding it.”

The other great difficulty presented by the Problem of Evil
is the way in which human-beings, upon being convinced that a certain course of
action is not only entirely justified but entirely right, will proceed
methodically to ensure that the course of action is implemented – no matter
what the cost.

Dr Stanley Milgram’s horrible experiment, in which people
were instructed to inflict electric shocks on participants who failed to answer
set questions correctly, offers grim confirmation of this human weakness.
Responding to the instructions of the authority figure overseeing the
experiment, fully two-thirds of the participants were prepared to deliver potentially
lethal shocks. They could hear the person screaming (or thought they could
since no one was actually being hurt) but, when ordered by the man in the white
coat to “continue with the experiment”, they obeyed.

In a society divided by class, gender and ethnicity there
will inevitably be people whose salaries depend upon their willingness to
deliver shocks – both real and symbolic – to their fellow human-beings. It is
extremely difficult to convince such people that they are doing anything wrong.
While the prevailing social and economic system and its practices are believed
to be both justified and right, the actions of these people, and the
consequences of their actions, will be similarly regarded.

The German philosopher, Hannah Arendt, observing the trial
of Adolf Eichmann (one of the leading planners and executors of the Holocaust)
in a Tel Aviv courtroom was struck by how ordinary he looked. Could this
balding, middle-aged man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and an ill-fitting suit
really be responsible for the deaths of six million innocent people? Far from
resembling Lucifer, Eichmann looked like a worn-out bureaucrat – which is
exactly what he was. Arendt referred to this profoundly demoralising
discrepancy as “the banality of evil”.

Because, unfortunately, evil looks nothing like the artist’s
impression: there are no horns, no tail, no cloven hooves, no whiff of sulphur.
Life would be so much easier if there were! No, if you really want to know what
evil looks like, then examine the faces of the people who live next door; the
people on the bus; the people in the lunchroom at work. But don’t stop there.
If you truly want to examine the face of evil – just take a look in the mirror.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 14 August 2018.

Sunday, 12 August 2018

Checkmate: The impending political crisis over free speech threatens at least two of the multiple players currently engaged on New Zealand’s political chessboard. For Labour and the Greens it may already be too late to protect themselves from the moves of their opponents. For National and NZ First, however, a path to electoral victory in 2020 beckons.

A CHESS GRAND-MASTER can discern the future direction of the
game from the way the pieces on the board are configured. He is thus able to
predict the moves of his opponent with considerable accuracy. In some
instances, he will be able to identify a path to victory that cannot be
blocked. When both players see this path, the doomed King is laid flat and the
game is over.

The impending political crisis over free speech threatens at
least two of the multiple players currently engaged on New Zealand’s political
chessboard. For Labour and the Greens it may already be too late to protect
themselves from the moves of their opponents. For National and NZ First,
however, a path to electoral victory in 2020 beckons.

The passions aroused by the recent visit of two Canadian
right-wing provocateurs, Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux, are evidence of
deep cultural tensions within New Zealand society.

Superficially, these tensions appear to be generated by
powerful disagreements over what freedom of speech actually means. Those who
regard free speech as an indispensable precondition for any functioning
democracy pit themselves against those who consider the whole concept to be a
mere rhetorical flourish: a principle promoted by dominant groups for no better
reason than to maintain their economic, social and cultural privilege.

At a deeper level, however, the controversy threw into sharp
relief the ideological contours of twenty-first century New Zealand.
Multiculturalism was exposed as something much more than an academic buzzword.
What Southern and Molyneux made clear, by opposing it so openly and
aggressively, is that multiculturalism has become our official state ideology.

There’s a saying, often attributed to Voltaire, which
declares: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed
to criticise.” The free speech controversy, by identifying multiculturalism as
the concept Kiwis are not allowed to critique without drawing down the
unrelenting wrath of its state-sanctioned and supported defenders, has caused
many citizens to wonder when and how “nationalism” and “biculturalism” became
dirty words.

The answer is bound up with New Zealand’s – or, at least
“official” New Zealand’s – wholesale embrace of neoliberalism and
globalisation. A country whose elites have signed-up to an economic philosophy
based on the free movement of goods, capital and labour: the three fundamental
drivers of globalisation; is more or less obliged to adopt multiculturalism as
it core social philosophy.

Old fashioned New Zealand nationalism, and its more recent
offshoot “biculturalism”, were products of a country which saw itself as
offering something uniquely and positively its own to the rest of the world. It
is probable that a substantial majority of Kiwis still subscribe to this notion
(although a significant minority still struggle with the concept of
biculturalism).

What the free speech controversy of the past four weeks
revealed to New Zealanders was that too forthright an expression of cultural
nationalism can result in the persons advocating such notions being branded
xenophobic or racist – and even to accusations of being a white supremacist,
fascist or Nazi.

The battle for free speech cannot, therefore, be prevented
from extending out into a broader discussion over whether or not New Zealanders
have the right to reject the downsides of neoliberalism, globalisation and
multiculturalism. Is it any longer possible to advance the radically nationalistic
idea that the nature and future of New Zealand is a matter which New Zealanders
alone must decide, without finding oneself pilloried on Twitter or banned from
the nation’s universities?

Returning to our chess analogy, it is possible to foresee
that in the months ahead NZ First will find itself feeling more and more
alienated from the radical multiculturalists in Labour and the Greens. The
sharper the free speech debate becomes, the more likely it is that Winston
Peters and his fellow “fetishizers of New Zealandness” will find themselves
branded purveyors of “hate speech” by the Red and Green pieces on the political
chessboard.

If National refuses to take the lead role in upholding free
speech, then the chances are high that a new political party dedicated to
defending New Zealanders’ rights and freedoms will start placing additional
pieces on the chessboard. The sheer venom (and violent protests) such a party
would be bound to attract from the Ctrl-Left would very soon lift its support
above the 5 percent MMP threshold.

Checkmate in two years.

This essay was
originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of
Friday, 10 August 2018.

But Has Grant Got His Leather Jacket Caught In The Handle? Declining business confidence and how the government should respond to it is fast developing into a game of political and economic ‘chicken’. Both sides know they are being challenged. They also know that the longer they delay responding the greater the risk of a tragic outcome. (Screen shot from Rebel Without A Cause)

EVERY TIME the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance
address the “Business Community” I wince. It’s painful to watch them abase
themselves in the way they do. As if their endless protestations of good will
and their oft-repeated promise to “listen” will make the slightest difference.
The Business Community is acutely aware that there is nothing with more
potential to cause them harm than a left-wing government. If it cannot be tamed,
then it must be broken.

At the moment the attention of the government’s business
opponents is focused on its reaction to the evidence of plummeting business
confidence. This is fast developing into a game of political and economic ‘chicken’.
Both sides know they are being challenged. They also know that the longer they
delay responding the greater the risk of a tragic outcome. The Business
Community is, however, convinced that, on the basis of its previous experience with
left-wing governments, Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson will swerve first.

By “swerving” they mean backing away (if not actually
backing down) from their proposed employment law reforms. The more intelligent
members of the business community are only too aware of the head of steam that
is building up in the workforce for a decisive shift in the power relationships
prevailing in the workplace. Any reform that makes it easier for workers in the
private sector to be organised into unions – let alone aggregated into the
occupational collectivities of the pre-Employment Contracts Act era – has the
potential to set off a wave of unionisation that could fundamentally
disadvantage shareholders of all sizes.

Such a “revolution of rising expectations” has, however,
been on the cards from the moment Jacinda began scattering her stardust hither
and yon in the run-up to last year’s election. That stardust poses a huge
problem for Labour. Without it, there was – and is – no possibility of the
party winning anything like enough support to form a government. In deploying her
politics of hope and kindness, however, Jacinda has raised New Zealanders hopes
and dreams to dangerous new heights.

New Zealanders are expecting the Labour-led government to
usher-in real and positive changes in the way they live their lives. Failure to
meet these expectations will, almost certainly, result in the fall of the
Labour-NZF-Green Government.

Jacinda and her team know this. They may have bought
themselves some time by setting up scores of working-groups and inquiries, but
at some point before the 2020 general election they are going to have to start
delivering real gains to the people who voted for them. Being seen to back
away, albeit under fierce business pressure, from restoring a modicum of
fairness to the workplace will be seen by many traditional Labour supporters
(especially the present and former members of trade unions) as a betrayal.

And yet, as the wage campaigns of public sector workers (the
only groups who have been able to retain a credible measure of union density)
are rolled out and resolved in settlements involving double-figures, the
restiveness of the largely un-unionised private sector workforce can only grow.
The Business Community do not need to have the consequences of this restiveness
spelled out for them. Employment law reform could quite easily result in an
unprecedented and largely unorganised strike-wave sweeping across the country.

That’s enough to shake the confidence of even the most
unflappable CEO.

Unfortunately, it is also more than enough to unsettle the
nerves of a social-democratic government that would (to paraphrase the shrewd observation
of an old trade unionist pal of mine) retain control of the losing side in an
argument about employment law reform than lose control of the winning side.

In spite of its name, the last thing Labour wants is the New
Zealand working-class taking matters into its own hands.

Those who have put their money on Jacinda and Grant swerving
at the last minute have, if history is any guide, made a pretty safe bet.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 10 August 2018.

Saturday, 11 August 2018

People Could Get Hurt Here! If we’d had the same health and safety rules back in 1981 as we have now, then the Springboks wouldn’t have got to play a single game!

IF ONLY the New Zealand of 1981 had possessed health and
safety legislation to match the laws of 2018. It took Pat McQuarrie, at the
controls of the light aircraft he had stolen from Taupo airport, and his threat
to fly it into the grandstand of Hamilton’s Rugby Park, to persuade the Police
Commissioner, Bob Walton, that it might be in the interests of the health and
safety of the spectators gathered to watch the Springbok-Waikato Rugby match on
25 July 1981 to cancel the fixture.

Fast-forward 37 years and just think how easy it would be to
achieve the same result today. No need for the likes of Pat McQuarrie in 2018.
A few hundred raggle-taggle left-wing gypsies threatening to “confront” Rugby
patrons if they attempted to enter the ground is all it would take to convince
the New Zealand Rugby Union that the game would have to be called-off.

Crikey! If we’d had the same health and safety rules back
then as we have now, then the Springboks wouldn’t have got to play a single
game. The anti-tour movement was just so huge in 1981 that its entirely
credible threat to organise major disruptions of air travel, the railways and the
motorways would have been more than enough to induce Rob Muldoon to instruct
the Rugby Union to withdraw their invitation to the South Africans.

Certainly, the state television network would have required
little more than the threat of interference with its super-expensive
transmission equipment to announce its determination to boycott the Springbok
Tour altogether. Of course, without television coverage of the matches it would
hardly have been worth the Rugby Union proceeding.

Such a shame that in 1981 the authorities cared so little
for the health and safety of New Zealanders that they were prepared to deploy
thousands of Police and employ the armed forces to lay thousands of metres of
barbed-wire to ensure that the rights of Rugby players and spectators were not
infringed. Not only that, but if any protester attempted to prevent the Rugby
matches from proceeding then they could expect to be cracked over the head with
a Policeman’s baton.

Yep. The consequences for exercising your right to free
expression back in 1981 could be severe. When the Springbok-Waikato game was called-off,
the protesters who had made it onto the field were lucky to escape with their
lives. Bottles and beer-cans rained down upon their heads leaving many of them
bloodied and bruised. Spectators pouring out of the park then attacked the
first-aid station treating the injured.

New Zealanders back then were horrified at the level of
violence unleashed on the protesters. But that’s only because people were much
less aware in 1981 that if people “talked shit” then they deserved to “get
bashed”. It was nowhere near as well understood in those days that speaking-out
against the prevailing ideas of the day constituted nothing less than an open
invitation to everybody who subscribed to those ideas to have at the dissidents
with fist and boot.

The 1980s were such unenlightened times. The appalling
events of that era could never happen in
the Aotearoa-New Zealand of 2018. Our health and safety laws simply wouldn’t
permit it!

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Thursday, 9 August 2018.

Friday, 10 August 2018

We Didn't Die Before We Grew Old: It is sobering to realise that by 2020 roughly half of the Baby Boom Generation will be drawing a pension. The “Over-65 Vote” will no longer be composed overwhelmingly of what Colin James dubbed “The RSA Generation”. More and more of these older voters will cherish youthful memories of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.

PICTURE THIS. It’s a just a few weeks before the 2020
general election and social media is smoking. A superb piece of digital fakery
has the National Party leader, Simon Bridges, inhaling enthusiastically. Over a
Pink Floydesque soundtrack, Bridges exhales an impressive cloud of marijuana
smoke. “My party is opposed to legalising pot” he explains, grinning broadly
and winking knowingly. “But, if the people of New Zealand vote yes to dope in
the forthcoming referendum, then a new National Party government will honour
their decision and end cannabis prohibition within its first 100 days.” The
clip ends with a rather glassy-eyed Bridges flashing his viewers the peace
sign. The video’s tag line flashes up on the screen: Simon says, VOTE YES – AND
NATIONAL.

Now, the prospect of a “funky” National Party mobilising the
“Head Vote” will no doubt strike many
readers as a most unlikely proposition. For a start, the staunchly conservative
Mr Bridges would certainly not take kindly to being portrayed as some sort of
peace, love and mungbeans hippie. Less certain, however, is whether his
campaign team would be all that bothered by such a clever piece of guerrilla
advertising. Not all fake news is bad news.

It is, similarly, important to realise that by 2020 roughly
half of the Baby Boom Generation will be drawing a pension. The “Over-65 Vote”
will no longer be composed overwhelmingly of what Colin James dubbed “The RSA
Generation”.

More and more of these older voters will cherish youthful
memories of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.

On a darker note, their personal experience will have
confirmed over and over again the brute reality that alcohol is capable of
inflicting immeasurably more harm on families, friends and workmates than cannabis sativa.

Their children will point out the absurdity of preserving
the market for increasingly deadly iterations of synthetic cannabis by
prohibiting the cultivation and use of the real thing – a substance with no
known fatalities to its credit.

The idea that the careers of their grandchildren may be
jeopardised by engaging in what is, essentially, a harmless habit, will fill
them with a mixture of exasperation and dread.

What’s more, as the Baby Boomers’ bodies begin to fail them
and the aches and pains of old age make themselves known with ever-increasing
intensity, the analgesic and stress-relieving qualities of cannabis will
recommend themselves with ever-increasing force. Why should the law be interested
in the consumption of a slice of hashish-infused chocolate-cake to relieve
arthritis?

These are the considerations that National’s campaign
strategists will be inviting Simon Bridges and his conservative colleagues to
consider. Active Christian worship is now very much a minority sport. Likewise
the misogyny and homophobia of those involuntarily celibate keyboard warriors
who daily defile the Internet. The overwhelming majority of New Zealanders are
men and women of good will and good humour. Those responsible for developing
National’s election manifesto would do well to remember that.

Good will and good humour does not, however, signal
soft-headedness. Sixty-five years and more on this earth has a habit of
exposing the weaknesses of youthful propositions concerning human nature. Monty
Python mercilessly satirised the notion that all individual failings could be
laid at the door of “Society” by offering to “book them too”.

The explanation for the rock-solid character of National’s
massive electoral support owes a great deal to older New Zealanders’ reluctant
acceptance that many of the wounds which their less fortunate fellow citizens
are expecting them to heal have almost certainly been self-inflicted. For the
past forty years, doubt has been growing steadily in “Middle New Zealand” about
the Welfare State’s capacity to improve the lives of either its “clients” or
the society in which they live.

Bill English recognised this growing doubt and attempted to
address it by means of his “Social Investment” initiatives. Much more work on
these is required before they are ready to be rolled-out as the replacement for
the First Labour Government’s “Social Security” model. There is, however, the
whiff of the future about English’s ideas, so, if Simon Bridges is as wise as
he is ambitious, then social investment will be the project into which he and
his caucus colleagues hurl themselves in the run-up to 2020.

Bridges simple message to Middle New Zealand could be:
“National’s not hard-hearted – just clear-headed”.

Except, of course, when it’s stoned.

This essay was
originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of
Friday, 3 August 2018.

From Right-Wing Moles To Free Speech Mountains: Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were confident that all they needed to do to spread their ideas in New Zealand was announce their intention of staging an event. The Left could be relied upon to do the rest.

WHAT A PITY there is no “Politburo” of the New Zealand Left.
A central committee of knowledgeable and experienced left-wing strategists and
organisers who could make decisions on behalf of the wider progressive
movement. Had such a body existed when the news of the impending visit of
Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux broke, then what happened next would have
been very different.

The Politburo would have perused the available information
on the Canadian duo and very quickly realised that the best course of action
for the New Zealand Left was to do absolutely nothing. No media releases. No
posters. No protests. Certainly no threats to disrupt the speakers’ public
meetings. In response to Southern and Molyneux, the New Zealand Left would do
precisely zero, zip, nada, nothing.

Why? Because even a cursory glance at Southern’s and
Molyneux’s modus operandi would have
alerted the Politburo to the fact that protests and threats of disruption were
absolutely indispensable to the success of the pair’s political touring.

Without the threats of disruption from Peace Action
Auckland, the Auckland Council would have had no grounds for denying Southern
and Molyneux access to the Bruce Mason Theatre in Takapuna (along with every
other council venue in Auckland!) on health and safety grounds. The meeting
would have taken place and, if the Canadians were lucky, they might have
merited a few brief paragraphs in the NZ
Herald. Most Kiwis would have remained blissfully unaware that Lauren
Southern and Stefan Molyneux even existed.

If provocateurs fail to provoke, do they make any sound at
all?

We’ll never know. Because, of course, the New Zealand Left
does not have a Politburo to provide it with sagacious strategic advice. It is
a wild, anarchic melange of individuals and groups, united only by the fierce
conviction that all those who challenge the phantasmagoria of sectional
sensitivities which constitute the contemporary “progressive” movement must ipso facto be fascists whose every
public utterance, being “hate speech”, must be suppressed – by any means
necessary.

Knowing this, Southern and Molyneux would have been
confident that all they needed to do to spread their ideas in New Zealand was
announce their intention to hold a meeting. The Left could be relied upon to do
the rest.

That the Canadians’ first infusion of power came from the
Mayor of New Zealand’s largest city must, however, have struck them as more
than usually fortuitous. Phil Goff’s naked assertion of the right to determine
what the citizens of Auckland could and could not hear was bound to rouse the
defenders of free expression to action. Better and better! Southern and
Molyneux could now count on tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders googling their
names and watching their YouTube channels.

The next step was to begin the game of “will they or won’t
they be able to secure a private venue?”. With social media crackling with
ideological thrust and counter-thrust and “anti-fascist” coalitions being
announced, the next phase of the propaganda operation was ready to unfold.

It was a phase Southern and Molyneux could hardly lose.
Either the secured venue would stand firm against the inevitable threats and
the meeting would go ahead. Or, the venue’s owners would be subjected to such
intolerable pressure that the meeting was cancelled. If the former eventuated,
then it would inevitably attract hundreds, if not thousands, of screaming
left-wing protesters. If it was cancelled, the Canadians could present
themselves as the victims of left-wing intimidation. Either way, the mainstream
news media would feel obligated to step into the story.

Which, with the Powerstation’s decision to first hire out,
and then deny, its facilities to the duo, is exactly what happened.

Had the proposed meeting at the Bruce Mason Theatre gone
ahead without incident, Southern and Molyneux would have been able to preach
to, at most, 800 already converted enthusiasts. As they wing their way back to
Canada, however, they will be congratulating themselves on being presented to the
tens-of-thousands of Kiwis watching the television current affairs programme
“Sunday” in prime-time.

Many socially-conservative New Zealanders, seeing the
Canadians for the first time, will doubtless have wondered how anyone could be
offended by two such telegenic and articulate individuals. The stridency of
their opponents, by contrast, must have appeared strange – even slightly
sinister.

Had it ever been the intention of the Left and its kindred
souls in the Human Rights Commission to extend and strengthen New Zealand’s
laws against “hate speech”, then its fruitless attempts to suppress the views
of Southern and Molyneux can only have rendered such an exercise significantly
more difficult.

The debate stirred up by the repeated denial of both public
and private stages to the pair on account of threats and intimidation has
placed the issue of free speech squarely on New Zealand’s political agenda. The
Left will find it much harder, now, to sell its arguments in favour of limiting
New Zealanders right to free expression that would have been the case if
Southern and Molyneux had simply been allowed to come and go without incident.

The Powerstation, Auckland, graffitied.

The person who sprayed graffiti on the Powerstation’s walls
over the weekend described Southern’s and Molyneux’s foray into New Zealand
politics as the “FREE SPEECH - EULOGY TOUR”. Given that eulogies are only
pronounced over the dead, the graffitist is clearly someone who believes the
Left has either already killed free speech, or is intending to do so in the
near future.

He, or she, is wrong on both counts.

This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 7 August 2018.